Did UAB president Ray Watts undervalue the potential economic impact of football on the university?

UAB supporters and industry experts are still debating the rationale behind UAB's decision to kill its football program more than a week after the announcement.

While supporters have blamed the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees, the school has been steadfast that it was a financial decision. Empowered by a CarrSports Consulting campus-wide review, UAB president Dr. Ray Watts decided the numbers didn't make sense for the school to keep football.

The report foresaw flat profits and growing costs -- It claimed the school needed to make a $49 million investment over a five-year period to stay competitive -- creating a "financial delta," according to Watts.

But proponents of the college athletics model believe UAB might have undervalued the positive economic impact of a football program.

John Hartwell, the athletic director at Troy, believes you can't view the success of a football program as solely expenses versus revenue. He feels schools need to factor in the media attention that comes with nationally televised games or bowl appearances when it does its cost-benefit analysis. That exposure could be worth millions of dollars, he says.

Earlier this year when Mississippi State was the nation's top-ranked team in October and focus of national media attention, athletic director Scott Stricklin said "You can't buy that kind of exposure because they don't sell it."

When it comes to exposure in southern states like Alabama, a big football win trumps all.

"I'm not saying this is right, but you could have a Nobel Prize winner who is a graduate of your institution or someone come up with a medical cure and that might be buried on the third page somewhere," Hartwell said.

"But if you win a national championship or even a conference championship, that's going to be front page news. That's our society as it is today."

UAB, as a member of Conference USA, didn't have nearly as many nationally televised games as in-state powers Alabama and Auburn. But the conference did have rights deals with multiple television networks, which gave the Blazers a weekly opportunity to showcase their brand. With the decision to disband football, UAB will not only have less visibility but will also see a significant dip in its television revenue. It will likely be forced to leave Conference USA due to by-laws that dictate all schools must play FBS-level football.

If forced to head to a non-football playing conference, UAB could lose upwards of $2 million annually in potential lost revenue from television rights and the new College Football Playoffs payout model. The CarrSports report didn't thoroughly evaluate the loss of branding and marketing opportunities.

Jon Steinbrecher, the commissioner of the Mid-American Conference, has negotiated television rights deals on behalf of his conference and said football is far and away the most lucrative component.

"Football is the most visible intercollegiate sport," Steinbrecher said. "It has the highest ratings and it has the highest interest from fanbases.

"Basketball is also a very visible sport, but it pales in comparison to what you do with football. It certainly pales in comparison from a revenue-generating point of view.

UAB may also need to brace for a drop in donations to the athletic department. Twelve UAB Champions Club members, the group of the school's biggest athletic donors, released a letter Wednesday questioning why no one reached out to them about financial donations to save the football program.

Could academics suffer? Studies show that athletics is usually not the primary reason a student selects a particular college but that there is a tangible connection between football success and an increase in applications.

In a 2013 study, "The Dynamic Advertising Effect of College Athletics," Harvard professor Doug Chung concluded that when a school rises from "mediocre to great" in football, its applications increase by 18.7 percent. The University of Alabama is a prime example, as its out-of-state applications have gone up 147 percent since Nick Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The out-of-state student pool is a particularly lucrative market most universities.

Another study-- "The Benefits of College Athletic Success: An Application of the Propensity Score Design with Instrumental Variables" -- argued that a winning football team led to bigger donations, higher average SAT scores, enhanced academic reputation and lower acceptance rates.

Critics would argue UAB football has rarely been successful, though the Blazers did finish 6-6 and bowl eligible for the first time in a decade this season.

UAB has previously indicated intentions to grow its enrollment numbers, but doesn't see football as part of a long-term solution. A UAB spokesperson even noted to The New York Times this week that only 8 percent of its 18,600 students attended a home football game this season. The school relied heavily on those students to supplement its athletic department -- student fees are up 86 percent since 2006 -- though the UAB administration has said it has no plans to lower fees after killing the football program.

Supporters of the football program believe the school could eventually see drops in enrollment without the sport.

Dr. Maurice Hobson was part of the first UAB team to play Division I football. As part of his further educational studies and teaching, he has spent time at Illinois, Alabama and Ole Miss. Now an assistant professor of African American Studies at Georgia State, he believes that football makes a campus livelier and that's enticing to prospective college students. Without it, he expects UAB academics to suffer.

"I think we'll see a major hit in undergraduate population and programs," Hobson said. "There is nothing for students to engage to have some pride in; there's no Homecoming game. UAB is already an urban campus, so you struggle to have that campus feel."

If the enrollment drops in the future, potential university savings from disbanding the football team could be diminished.

The most recent school to drop football, Pacific, didn't experience a drop in enrollment. At the time of Pacific's decision to cut football in 1995 -- also for financial reasons -- the school had a student body of 5,564. Now, its enrollment is 6,304.

Dr. David Ridpath, a sports management professor at Ohio University, is also not convinced the loss of football will turn away students. Ridpath, who studied schools using student fees to subsidize athletics, believes rising costs for students is more likely to keep them away.

"I do think the bubble will burst eventually," he said. "It is ironic that higher fees will likely have the opposite effect of what a school is trying to do with athletics -- which is increase enrollment. The higher prices will push potential students away...students are outraged at the (ever) increasing costs of athletic fees and question the value of them."